Bits of Gold from co-founder of Arkadium, Kenny Rosenblatt

This week on the Bits of Gold podcast, I had the pleasure of sitting down and sharing Kenny’s story. Kenny’s been on a fascinating entrepreneurial journey in building Arkadium and I wanted to share my biggest “bits of gold” from the episode!

1. Make more money than you spend. I know this sounds obvious, but it’s not actually practiced enough. So many people live outside of their means and are walking around with tons of debt. Edward Norton once said, “We buy things we don’t need, with money we don’t have, to impress people we don’t like.” Living a financially healthy life is very important in building your dream life. If you are constantly stressed about your finances or living outside of your means, take a pause to get things in order. Getting your finances in control and in order takes discipline, self-control, hard work, and commitment to likely changing your behavior and lifestyle more than anything. There are a lot of resources to help you in getting control of your finances. One of my favorites has been reading I Will Teach You to Be Rich, by Ramit Sethi. Try to challenge yourself and try to go 30 days with only buying your “needs.” (Food, gas, etc…) But simply put, make more money than you spend.
2. Your luck can change with one phone call. Building your dream life takes time. Don’t be naive thinking it will happen over night. It’s a never ending journey which will take years and years. When you are working towards your dreams and things just don’t seem to be going your way, don’t give up. You will hit brick walls, but never ever give up. As you ultimately just need one phone call or moment to change your luck forever. Kenny was 3-years into his business struggling to keep his doors open and his lights on. Then all of a sudden, he got a phone call from a customer asking if they had any poker games. At the time he didn’t but he said they did. He sent a proposal, and won the business. This deal was worth $250k. From there on out, they just figured out a business model and offering to scale the business. Never give up when things are not going your way… you may just be one phone call away from your goals.
3. People over profits. Longer hours, don’t always mean more results. It’s important to live a life of balance. Business and your career are only one area of focus in building your dream life. Some other areas are health, relationships, finances, hobbies, travel / adventure, family, etc…) Don’t lose sight on why you work in the first place. Make sure you are investing time in other areas in your life outside of just work. Make time for the things you care about and commit to allowing yourself to enjoy that time. It’s a marathon and not a sprint and reminding yourself of that will enable you to enjoy the process.
4. Failure is part of learning. In life you will fail at something. Likely more than once. Accept it. Kenny spoke about the system he uses to deal with failure. He gives himself two days max to be depressed about failure. After that, he commits to learning from the failure and moving onward and upward. With each set back, you need to learn from it, and then get back out there and try again. With each failure, you will create more resilience which will enable you to face greater opposition as you try to achieve greater and greater things. Just keep going, and know that each failure is a lesson and not a loss.
5. The greatest gift you can give is inspiration. Kenny spoke about how the greatest gift he feels he can give his kids is inspiration. I would tend to agree… however I’d add that this is just about the greatest gift you can give anyone. Inspiration that it’s possible is the spark some people need to make massive change in their life for the better. Seek to give yourself to others and give the gift of inspiring others as you continue on your journey.
6. Kenny’s Bit of Gold: “Live by your rules and follow your passion. I spent a lot of years trying to fit the tech startup founder role as that was glorified. And then I realized, f that. Thats not me. Let me just be who I am. Let me be authentically me and not try to fit the mold of others. This enabled me to thrive. That allowed me to live my best life. the “tech life”

Well there you have it from Kenny himself. His “bit of gold” in how to build your dream life. I hope you can apply these lessons in your life and on your journey.